The administration official said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to name Alan Bersin to the position on Wednesday during a visit to the Southwest border. The official would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

The children adorned their messages with peace symbols and smiley faces, rainbows and vivid red hearts. "Hi AIG. Not all of USA hates you," wrote one student. "We know you're not villains," wrote another. "Keep working hard, dudes! Keep eating your vegatabos!" advised a third.

Chapman mailed the nearly 30 cards from her school to the outcasts of the financial world at AIG. (She requested that The Washington Post not identify the school, worried that the gesture might attract some of the ugly phone calls and threats that have been visited upon AIG.)

"I hope this package doesn't arrive on April Fool's Day," she wrote, "because this really isn't a joke."

The cards now hang in the lunchrooms at the firm's offices in Connecticut and London.

"There were more than a few moist eyes and tight throats," employee Patrick O'Neill wrote back to the class. "To have reached out to us in such a heartfelt way is really a testament to your individual and collective humanity."

Gerry Pasciucco, the current leader of AIG-FP, also wrote to say that the gesture had deeply touched his battered staff. He signed off with a simple message:

Current Media, a cable television company co-founded by former US vice president Al Gore, has shelved plans for a 100-million-dollar initial public offering (IPO) citing "market conditions."

The San Francisco-based Current Media, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said it was withdrawing the plan for an IPO submitted to the SEC in January 2008.

"In light of current market conditions, the registrant has determined not to proceed at this time with the public offering," Current Media said in the filing with the SEC on Friday. "All activity regarding the proposed public offering has been discontinued."

Current Media, founded in 2005, operates Current TV, which reaches more than 50 million households in Britain and the United States, and a youth-focused website Current.com, where users can submit their own content.

The courts four conservative members – Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – oppose the use of foreign law in constitutional cases.

“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law,” Ginsburg said Friday in a symposium honoring her at Ohio State University, The New York Times reports.

Ginsburg says she’s fine with the idea that a U.S. court shouldn’t consider itself bound by the precedent established in international law.

But she’s also fine with the idea that a U.S. court can be influenced by strong reasoning from overseas.

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article written by a professor?” she says.

The Supreme Court’s reluctance to take into account foreign law has caused its global influence to wane, Ginsburg argues.

The Canadian Supreme Court is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court,” she says. That’s because “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

Roberts looks at in a different way. “If we’re relying on a decision from a German judge about what our Constitution means, no president accountable to the people appointed that judge, and no Senate accountable to the people confirmed that judge, he said at his confirmation hearing. "

“And yet he’s playing a role in shaping the law that binds the people in this country.”

Several bloggers took issue with Ginsburg. “Having foreign laws guide American law is unconstitutional,” writes Don Surber of the Charleston (WV) Daily Mail.

ROME -- The owner of an Italian-flagged tugboat seized by pirates off Somalia marveled Sunday at the U.S. Navy rescue of an American hostage there, and said he hopes his crew also will be saved.

Silvio Bartoletti, owner of shipping company Micoperi, said he wasn't any more concerned for his crew's safety following the operation by U.S. Navy Seals to free Capt. Richard Phillips.

The American forces opened fire on three pirates when a Navy commander made a split-second decision that Phillips' life was in danger on the lifeboat where he was being held hostage.

"I'm marveling that they'd do that for one American and not for 10 Italians" and six others, Bartoletti told The Associated Press. "I hope in the next days we could also have positive news."

The Micoperi tugboat Buccaneer was seized on Saturday by pirates off the northern Somali coast along with its crew, which in addition to the Italians includes five Romanians and a Croat.

Bartoletti said no ransom had been demanded as of yet.

While marveling at the American rescue, Bartoletti said he didn't think an Italian military operation would be possible at this stage, saying it probably could have only succeeded in the early hours after the seizure.

"By now they (the pirates) are organized," he said.

He did, however, suggest that U.S. forces in the region could help locate his ship.

"We hope the U.S. will help us get through this," he said, suggesting U.S. satellite imagery could probably "show me the smile on my commander's face."

The Italian foreign ministry said Sunday the Italian navy ship Maestrale reached the area where the tug was seized and that officials from the foreign and defense ministries were working to coordinate efforts with Somalia's transitional government in a bid to free the crew.

The ministry said it was providing scant other information, saying it was treating the case with maximum "reserve." Relatives of the seamen, meanwhile, said they were anxiously awaiting word on the fate of their loved ones.

Alessandra Costanzo, wife of Buccaneer Cmdr. Mario Iarlori, said she was desperate for information. In an interview with the AP, she said Micoperi officials had been in touch, but that they had no news. "We don't know anything," she told the AP.

Costanzo said the tug left Singapore about 20 days and was heading toward Italy, due to return at the end of the month or beginning of May.

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April 7, 2009

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"Victims" of climate change would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under language buried in the House climate bill, according to a report in the Washington Times.

Under the provision, anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit."

The term “harm” is broadly defined as “any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring.”

The United Nations scientific panel studying climate change predicts in its latest report that the global climate is likely to rise between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit if the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reaches twice the level of 1750.

By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise between 7 to 23 inches, it said, and the changes now underway will continue for centuries to come, according to a report in the New York Times.

If the worst case climate scenario comes to pass and the House provision makes its way into the final climate bill signed by the President, lawyers may be in for a field day of litigation.

“You could be spawning lawsuits at almost any place [climate-change modeling] computers place at harm’s risk,” Bill Kovacs, energy lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told the Times.

There are set limits, however, to the potential windfalls for the lawyers and their citizen clients.

As presently written, the bill would cap the damages culled from the government at $75,000 each year for each individual suit.

Expansion of the Clean Air Act to allow “citizen suits” on climate change has long been a goal among environmental groups – although the measure has never succeeded. One theory pres3ented by advocates is that the citizen suits will force compliance on the part of a sometimes recalcitrant government.

According to the Washington Times report, under the House bill, if a judge rules against the government, new rules would have to be put in play to correct the problems associated with climate change.

If a judge rules against a company, it would have to purchase additional "carbon emission allowances" through a cap-and-trade established by Congress.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, cap-and-trade systems can be best summed up as “pollution credits.” Overall air quality goals are set for an area and specific sources of air pollution (such as power plants, waste incineration facilities, etc.) are given a certain number of allowances, which represent the amount of various pollutants that the organization or facility is allowed to discharge.

Facilities that come in under that allowable limit because of air pollution control systems can then sell their leftover allowances to other facilities and organizations on the open market. This allows the facilities that buy up such allowances (pollution credits) to pollute more, because other facilities are polluting less.

Whatever the resolution of one of these citizen suits, the total amount paid out each year is capped at $1.5 million per individual case, committee staff told the Washington Times.

David Doniger, senior counsel with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the House bill provision follows a key environmental ruling from the Supreme Court allowing states to sue the federal government for damages from climate change – largely because of eroded shorelines caused by rising sea levels.

When that $75 billion homeowner plan was signed and ready to go, actually excuse me that $275 billion dollar plan ($1 billion for Fannie Mae and $1 billion for Freddie Mac), I read the plan and I kept thinking to myself, "hmm...most of the people that I know that are having problems, have second mortgages and this plan does not address that, nor does it cover third mortgages."

Well, hey guess what? The plan hit a "stumbling block." That's right. There is now "a fight over how to aid borrowers who have more than one home loan." Of course I have yet to see any of this on any of the MSM channels.

So, we have the Treasury Department "scrambling" to address the problem. What Treasury is trying to do is to persuade lenders to forgive or greatly reduce so-called second liens. With this fantastic idea, there is a fight betwen investors who own securities backed by first mortgages and banks that hold second mortgages over how the losses should be shared.

According to Credit Suisse, half of the seriously delinquent borrowers have a second mortgage. Really, who would have known or even thought about this when the plan was taking shape. Apparently not the administration.

Of course they are working on another plan that they are hoping to announce sometime this week. But they need the support of the bankers, homeowner advocates and investors, who include pension funds, insurance companies and hedge funds. But so far the proposals are just going back and forth.

The foreclosure-prevention plan that was unveiled, so to speak, is designed to help as many as four million homeowners by encouraging lenders and tier agents to rewrite mortgage terms to make them more affordable.

In the plan, it was left extremely vague on how to pay-loan servicing companies to help with the second mortgages and also home equity lines of credit and down-payment loans.

But have no fear, the Treasury is “actively working” on the second mortgage issue and will announce “something within the next few weeks. Don’t hold your breath!

Here is some of what they have in mind. One proposal would require lenders to cap monthly payments on second loans at a set percentage of the borrower’s gross income. Te lender would be expected to “eat the vast majority” of the cost, with the government subsidizing a small portion. Well, isn’t that special.

In the fourth quarter, delinquencies on home-equity loans climbed to a record 3.03% from 2.39% a year earlier. A problem that is out there is that first and second mortgages are often owned by different parties and may be handled by different mortgage servicers.

The mortgage investors who typically own the first mortgages say they are willing to take some losses in an effort to resolve the housing crisis. But they did add that rewriting their contracts without touching the second liens violates their rights. Contracts, do they really mean anything anymore?

The jurisdiction in which you reside has recently undergone a tax rate change. Accordingly, the tax rate associated with your monthly vehicle lease payment has been adjusted to 8.750%. Your next billing statement will reflect your new monthly payment.